


Brothers From Another Mother

by intangible_girl



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, Gen, Ivan and Tony have a lot in common when you think about it, and those vile green smoothies, guest starring the cockatiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-20 20:26:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intangible_girl/pseuds/intangible_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ivan pulls away a little rudely. Tony will not ply him with food as though it is his stomach that is empty and not his heart. Tony will understand what it is like to lose someone you weren’t always sure you wanted around in the first place. Pepper doesn’t seem perturbed, though. She never is.</p><p>AU based on a kinkmeme prompt where Ivan is a childhood friend of Tony's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Ivan Vanko,” Pepper breathes, hands stilling over her cell phone. Her eyes are wide, and Ivan feels a flash of satisfaction at having flustered the great Pepper Potts.

“Miss Potts,” he rumbles, grinning. “How wonderful to see you.”

She gets up slowly, approaching him with care, but when she reaches him and hugs him it is not a surprise.

“I heard about your father,” she says into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

Her sympathy is a sting, but the sting of salt, of healing, and he pats her back awkwardly.

“It was his time,” he says. “He is happier now, I think.”

“I’m sure he is,” Pepper says, pulling back, searching his face for—what, Ivan doesn’t know, but she smiles kindly and lets him go. “Do you need anything? Are you hungry?”

“Is Tony here?” he asks, a little rudely, but Tony will not ply him with food as though it is his stomach that is empty and not his heart. Tony will understand what it is like to lose someone you weren’t always sure you wanted around in the first place. Pepper doesn’t seem perturbed, though. She never is.

“He’s downstairs. I know he’ll be happy to see you.”

“It is good to see _you_ , Miss Potts,” he says, sincerely, because it is, and because he has realized in the last month that people are fleeting things and maybe he should pay more attention to them. She smiles genuinely and he takes his leave.

“Tony Stark!” he roars through the glass when he reaches the bottom. “You greasy son of a bitch, where are you?”

Wild hair and dark welding goggles pop up from some piece of robotics far in the back. Tony pushes the goggles up from his face, revealing round pale patches of skin in their absence. Ivan does not know how Tony gets so filthy or why it doesn’t seem to bother him. Ivan has been dirty all his life, and being able to spend an hour and an entire bar of soap in a shower where the hot water doesn’t run out is pretty much why he comes to visit Tony. Tony knows this, and there are always obscene amounts of soap in his rooms when he is here.

“Ivan,” Tony says warmly. “You red bastard, come on in. Door’s not locked, not to you. Jarvis knows you, don’t you, Jarvis?”

“Indeed, Mr. Vanko. Your fingerprints are in my system. Simply place your hand on the glass plate by the door and it will open.”

Ivan does so, still as unnerved by the computer-man as the day Tony first showed him off. Computers, like children, Ivan thinks, should be seen and not heard.

“Pepper didn’t tell me you were coming,” Tony says, setting down his goggles and taking a swig of something green. Ivan narrows his eyes fractionally—it looks disgusting, whatever it is—but he and Tony clasp arms when they reach each other and don’t say anything for a moment. Tony knows. Of course he does. Ivan lets the silence stretch a little more, and then simply says,

“I didn’t tell her.”

Tony studies him a little closer, and then nods, and lets him go.

“How long are you in town?” he asks over his shoulder as he starts flicking holographic images around compulsively. Ivan has always preferred paper and pen, side rule and compass, his bird and his vodka. Tony and his computers and his scotch make him feel a little less real.

“I don’t know,” he says, hands in his pockets. He had thought only of seeing Tony, seeing the understanding in his eyes that he hoped would ground him, bring him back to earth, give him purpose again. He had looked no further than that, and now that he is here, now that he has seen Tony and been given his understanding, he feels just as empty as before and almost more lost than ever.

There’s a pause as Tony digests this.

“Well, you’re always welcome to stay here, you know. For—however long you’re in town.”

Ivan grunts lightly, poking at a wireframe of the Iron Man suit, which spins crazily in response to his touch. Tony’s habit of launching himself in front of missiles and blowing up weapons depots had always made Anton shake his fist at the television, swearing and coughing. ‘That should have been you, Ivan,’ he had whispered before he died, and Ivan had agreed, because what else could you say to your dying father, but in his heart he had no desire to be Tony Stark. The man was mad, half-married to technology: a cyborg with that thing in his chest.

“Where’s the bird?” Tony says into the silence. Tony has always abhorred silence. Ivan puts his hands back in his pockets.

“With my bags.”

“Go get him, I miss him.”

“He bit your ear so hard it bled.”

“Sign of affection.”

Ivan sighs. He will stay here, because Tony is just so— _alive_. He annoys you and drives you crazy, but he never lets you doubt that you are alive. That is what he needs, even if it isn’t what he wants.

“You are crazy, Tony Stark,” he says, but he can’t help but answer Tony’s fierce grin with a tentative one of his own.


	2. Chapter 2

 “Chlorophyll,” Ivan says, and instantly Tony is fixing him with that sharp, black-eyed gaze that has so much of his mother in it it’s disgusting. Pepper just looks up from her newspaper and her smoothie and furrows her brow at him. “It’s good for you, yeah?” he continues, gesturing at Tony’s large glass of green liquid sitting next to his toast.

“Yeah,” he agrees warily, but he already knows what’s coming and is powerless to stop it.

“Is that what all the cool kids in Hollywood are drinking now, Tony?” Ivan goes on, leaning lazily back in his seat. “It looks disgusting to me.”

“Ugh, me too,” Pepper joins in, either because she hasn’t guessed what’s going on yet or because she has and hates tension at the breakfast table Ivan isn’t sure. “He made me drink some once; I nearly threw up.”

“It’s supposed to help fight cancer,” Tony says quickly, “That’s been proven.”

“Has it, now?” Ivan says agreeably. “I have heard it is also so similar to human blood that it can actually raise red blood cell count. Have they proven this also?”

“Ivan,” Tony starts warningly, and Ivan surges out of his seat, banging his fist on the table in a way that is disturbingly like Anton, which is something he puts to the back of his mind with practiced ease.

“ _It is therefore_ ,” he roars over Tony, making Pepper jump, “exactly what you want when your blood toxicity gets too high. The closest thing to a blood transfusion you can get without going to a _doctor_!” Pepper jumps again, eyes wide and frightened. She has never seen Ivan in one of his rages, but she is not about to. Tony just looks sick.

“Don’t—” he starts again, but Ivan is very good at making people hear him whether they want to or not.

“Blood toxicity,” he says loud enough to drown Tony out, “such as caused by metal poisoning. For example, let’s say… palladium.”

Tony stands, eyes flashing.

“Don’t do this Ivan—”

“Palladium, which is the main ingredient of… that little thing,” Ivan says softly, large, calloused finger coming forward to tap gently on the arc reactor. The slight, tinny thunk his fingernail makes against the metal under Tony’s t-shirt is loud in the sudden, absolute silence.

Tony is livid.

“Tony, what’s he talking about?” Pepper asks as she stands too. Her voice is a little faint, but it holds promise of greater strength when she gets her wits about her once more. Tony’s eyes don’t leave Ivan’s for a second.

“Nothing, he’s crazy,” he says, way too quickly, and Ivan grins, knowing full well his gold teeth are glinting disconcertingly in the soft light of this ultra-modern kitchen.

“Crazy,” he repeats softly, still smiling. Then he allows the rage to take over his face, snarling. “How long until you told one of us, you son of a bitch! How long until you drop dead and leave us wondering what the hell happened—”

“Four months until my teeth start falling out,” Tony says, voice tightly controlled and just as deadly as Ivan’s. “Five months until I get a more or less permanent case of bronchitis. Six months until I’m bed-ridden, and that’s all if I’m lucky.”

“Then why keep—”

“Why?” Tony’s voice is sharp, more cutting than razor blades, and he is more angry than Ivan has ever seen him; he’d suspected it was there, underneath, but Tony never lets anyone see this, this anger that isn’t tightly controlled, pressed down under unimaginable pressure until it becomes white hot and he pours it into whatever mold he needs and forges some new miracle using only sweat and pure nerve. “Why do I keep shoving poisonous metals in my chest when it’s obviously killing me? That’s easy: I’d rather have six months than one week, which is exactly how long I have if I take it out. This _thing_ ,” he hisses, jabbing at the reactor with his fingers, “that is killing me is also the only thing keeping me alive, and don’t think for _one second_ I’m not perfectly aware of the irony.”

“Tony,” Ivan says, gentle, chiding, exasperated, “Did it not occur to you to have the shrapnel _removed_?”

“Re—” Tony splutters, “Did it—Did it ever _occur_ to me?” And then he is shouting, nearly at the top of his lungs: “Of course it damn well occurred to me, do you think I’m that stupid, of course I want it out! But modern surgery isn’t _advanced_ enough,” and Ivan hears the thread of pain under that word very well, “to extract tiny pieces of metal from my heart without shredding it just as surely as those tiny pieces of metal if I ever get rid of _this_.” Tony jabs at the reactor again, and then slumps, tiredly, and Ivan—Ivan is thinking that while there are plenty of things Tony is stupid about, there are also things he is never stupid about, and if Tony believes he is dying then he very well is.

“Then—another metal—” He’s grasping at straws, he knows that, but Anton’s death is too raw still, will always be too raw, he thinks, for him not to clutch and grasp at any possibility if it exists.

“There is no other metal,” Tony says lowly. “I’ve tried everything I can think of; nothing works. There is no element, no, no alloy—nothing. There’s nothing.”

Ivan is aware, distantly, that Pepper is crying. He hates it when women cry; his mother cried and wailed and wept, and look where she ended up.

“There must be something,” he says hollowly. Tony just shakes his head, leaning against the table tiredly. His skin suddenly looks sunken, his hands bony, and Ivan wonders idly how much weight he’s lost. After a moment soaked in silence Tony turns to leave, heading for his workshop.

“Tony, get back here _right now_.” Pepper’s voice cuts through the silence, and under her tears is unbreakable steel. It stops Tony in his tracks, but he recovers and continues. “I mean it—Jarvis, don’t let him in his workshop.”

“I’m afraid I can’t prevent him from—”

“Jarvis, lock the door to the workshop, override protocol Mrs. Stark-Potts.”

There’s a very charged silence where Tony stills. After a moment Jarvis informs Miss Potts that he has done as she requested. Tony stands with his back to the two of them, not moving. All Ivan can do is stare.

“Yes, I found out about it,” Pepper says, voice thick with crying but quite even. “Though I thought it was just in case you blew yourself up, not—not—”

“Let me back in my workshop, Pepper,” Tony orders quietly.

“No. You come back here, and you—”

“Unlock the door, Pep—” Tony turns around, face carefully set.

“—sit down, and you talk about this—”

“There’s nothing to talk about—”

“I will decide that, thank you very much.” Her voice is ice, steel, obsidian, and Tony’s protests die on his lips. He stares at her, and then he stares at nothing, but he doesn’t move. When it becomes clear that he is not coming back to the table, Pepper asks in a quiet voice that gives Ivan the chills,

“When were you going to tell me?”

“I—soon.”

“Soon?”

“Yes, I—there hasn’t been a good time—”

“Not a good time?” Incredulous. “How long have you known about this?”

Tony worries his lower lip.

“Since—I suspected since the beginning, but I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think you should _tell me_ —”

“I didn’t think it would come to this. I was always going to find a different metal—”

“How long have you known you were _dying_?”

He is silent so long Ivan thinks he isn’t going to answer. But he does, in a barely audible voice.

“Three months.”

“And in _three months_ ,” Pepper’s voice is getting thicker, and it continues to do so as her pitch climbs, “it never _once_ occurred to you to _tell me_?”

“I didn’t want to worry you—”

“Three months, Tony!” Pepper is beyond the semblance of calm, now, but neither man will interrupt her like this, “Three months without any word on whether you were alive or dead. Three months trying to act like you were on some kind of, of, of vacation and you hadn’t invited me. Three months where I didn’t know if I should just hold a memorial service because _then_ I might finally be able to decide between hope and grieving. And then,” tears spill out of her eyes, but her voice only wobbles a little, “when you came home, you were different. I thought—sometimes I thought you were better this way, and sometimes I just wished you could go back to being the asshole you used to be, because at least then I didn’t watch the news just to see whether you’d finally gotten yourself killed. I have been watching you _almost die_ for the past eight months, Tony, and you had better believe I have been worrying myself sick that entire time. _So don’t tell me_ you didn’t want to _worry_ me, or so help me god I will kill you myself _right here and now_.”

Out of the corner of his eye Ivan can see Pepper trembling, a whole-body body shaking that she mitigates by wrapping her long, delicate fingers around the back of a chair and squeezing until her knuckles are white. She takes a few steadying breaths as Tony just continues to stand there and stare at nothing, brown eyes so dark they look black. When she has gotten herself back under control somewhat, she continues in a more reasonable voice,

“Now you sit down, and you finish your toast and your chlorophyll, and we will talk about this.”

Tony makes an abortive gesture that turns into him rubbing his eye tiredly, but eventually he sits down. Ivan and Pepper sink down with him. There is complete silence for an unnervingly long time, and then Pepper turns to Ivan, eyes rimmed red and voice stuffy but clear.

“Ivan, you’ll look into it, won’t you? Tony has this idea that he’s the only smart person in the world, but I happen to know that’s not true.”

Ivan nods.

“He is engineer first. He thinks all his problems can be solved with welding torch. I will see if I can figure out something.”

“Can we—not talk about me like I’m not here?” Tony pleads, a little of his old humor bleeding back into his voice. Pepper levels him with a lizard-like stare.

“Do you have anything add?” she asks coolly. Tony takes in a breath to speak, and then exhales it noisily, poking at the breadcrumbs on his plate.

“I should have told you I was dying,” he mumbles at the table. Then he looks up. “But in my defense, there aren’t exactly Hallmark cards for this. I don’t—I didn’t know _how_ to tell you.”

Pepper considers this, and then nods.

“I will take that into consideration,” she says, and Ivan can see how she nearly single-handedly runs Stark Industries by herself. “But that doesn’t excuse the fact that you completely failed to take my feelings into account—”

“Your fee—Pepper, I _do_ know how stressful I make your life, I was trying not to add—”

“—like you _never_ do— don’t pretend like lying to me was some kind of noble sacrifice—”

Ivan, who would normally let this go on indefinitely because he’s never seen two more stubborn, oblivious people in his life, snaps his fingers in the space between them. They both rear back and fix him with outraged looks.

“If I want Abbot and Costello at my breakfast table, I bring the television,” Ivan reprimands, and leans over to finish his eggs.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m pretending I switched Natasha out for Clint because SHIELD might figure Ivan has a chance of recognizing her, but really I just wanted to see Clint pretending to be ‘Clive from legal.’ Tee hee.

Ivan is there when Tony officially signs Stark Industries over to Pepper; Happy is trying not to show how completely intimidated he is as he runs him through some boxing moves. Ivan resists the urge to shout “Boo!” in the man’s face to see if he falls over.

Tony had insisted it not be a special occasion; he’d sort of been planning on something like this for a while, he’d said; Pepper practically runs SI anyway, might as well make it official; the lack of stress will help with his health.

None of them state the obvious: Tony is putting his affairs in order.

The unassuming man from legal is only unassuming for about five seconds, and then Ivan is staring at him, batting Happy’s gloves away without looking. The man is far too intense for some flunky with a law degree, and his smile is too smooth, his stance too straight and steady for someone who works at a desk all day.

Tony ignores Clive from legal completely when it becomes clear he’s flirting oh-so-gently with Pepper, and that’s just one too many things for Ivan to ignore.

“Where did you go to law school, Clive?” he asks, tone friendly, teeth showing. Clive doesn’t look startled by the question at all, and he takes Ivan, tattoos, gold teeth, and all, completely in stride, something Ivan is not used to in this clean cut world of people in suits and high heels with enough product in their hair to start a fire.

“Harvard,” he says, tucking the folder under his arm and looking back and forth between him and Pepper, waiting to be dismissed.

“You ever box, Clive?” Ivan asks, tearing Happy’s gloves off his hands despite the man’s protests. Clive looks appropriately startled, and then waves his free hand dismissively, laughing, anticipating the next question out of Ivan’s mouth.

“No, no, you’d kill me, I couldn’t.”

“Get up here.” Ivan’s voice is just a little too icy to be encouragingly cajoling, and Clive stills for a moment before glancing at Pepper once more. But Pepper is fussing over Tony, not paying them the slightest bit of attention, and Ivan softens his tone just a little as he adds, “You look like you work out, Clive. Let’s see what you can do.”

The man grins, clearly unable to back down from a challenge, and he sets down his folder and sheds his tie with almost shocking efficiency before climbing into the ring. Distantly Ivan hears Tony and Pepper finally cluing in on what is happening, but he’s watching Clive rolls up his sleeves to reveal heavily muscled forearms, one slightly bigger than the other. He slips off his shoes and starts bouncing on his toes, holding out his hands for the gloves, but Ivan has never fought with gloves and he drops them and punches Clive in one fluid moment.

When Clive blocks his punch with a practiced movement, face barely twitching, Ivan reconsiders who he is dealing with, and grabs the blocking arm as he punches with his other hand. Clive moves to block that one too, and he clearly knows how to fight but he doesn’t seem to know how to fight like you don’t care if you’re alive at the end of it because he barely manages to put up a token protest before Ivan head butts him, and yes, that hurts him just as much as it does Clive, but Ivan has fought more vicious men half-blind on vodka and a little dizziness is not enough to stop him from taking Clive down and pinning him to the mat, both hands now secured behind his back.

“ _Who sent you_ ,” Ivan is roaring, and he’s not even sure if he’s doing it in English or Russian, that’s how far gone he is. Clive is still babbling in apparent fear, but Ivan smells no fear on him and he pushes down on Clive’s wrists hard enough to hurt but not quite hard enough to snap.

“Don’ play stupid vit’ me, you are not flunky from legal. Talk or I break both your wrists.”

Pepper stops screaming and the sudden silence is how Ivan becomes aware that she had been. He can’t see her and Tony from this angle but Clive can, and he sees the man give them a long, considering glance before going limp in his grasp.

“SHIELD,” he gasps out, “I’m with SHIELD, Fury sent me, goddamn it, they said this would be a cakewalk, I never signed up for this, you better not break my wrists or you’ll be damaging government property, not to mention priceless works of art, damn it Stark, tell him to let me up, will you?”

Ivan shifts so he can see Tony, who is staring at Clive with a hollow look in his eyes.

“Fury, huh?” he says, and his eyes narrow for a second. Then he rolls them, leaning back a little, and he gestures for Ivan to let him go. “What, you’re supposed to be his second eye around here, is that it?”

Ivan presses down a bit before letting go, just so Clive knows who won that fight. Clive sits up, rubbing his wrists, and sends a glare Ivan’s way before turning to Tony.

“Risk assessment on your friend here. Keeping an eye on you. Keeping you safe.”

Tony scoffs. Ivan feels a pleased smile curl his lips. If you have to be noticed by the government, it is always best to make sure you keep them on their toes.

“Fury doesn’t think the big metal suit keeps me safe enough?”

“I don’t know,” Clive smirks, too smarmy for Ivan’s taste, “how’s the palladium poisoning going?”

The tension in the room ratchets up several degrees. Happy splutters, but everyone ignores him. Pepper is hovering by Tony’s elbow, watching the proceedings with wide eyes that Ivan knows indicate she is taking in every detail of the situation just as surely as it indicates fear.

“How,” Tony starts, and then shakes his head. “I don’t want to know. It’s going swimmingly, thanks for asking, now how about you get off my property?”

“Don’t I get a phone call first?” Clive quips, and Ivan tenses, but the man is already waving his joke away. “Really, though, I’m gonna tell Fury to just hurry up and send you the stuff, you look like you could use a break.”

“What stuff,” Tony asks flatly, but Clive is already collecting his shoes and tie. Pepper snatches up the folder before he can even move for it, and he smiles ruefully at that.

“You’ll see. You’ll like it, I promise. It might even help with the thing.” He gestures vaguely at Tony’s chest, and then saunters out the door, leaving them confused and staring.

“Fury,” Ivan says, and it’s a question he doesn’t know how to ask. Tony flaps a hand without looking at him.

“Secret stuff, very classified, I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you.”

Ivan growls, and Happy finally gets his wits about him.

“Should I go after him, boss?”

Ivan sighs heavily and gets out of the ring. He refuses to be near such stupidity. With his luck it’s probably catching.

~*~

Owner of the most successful weapons company in the world now that SI is out of the business, and Justin Hammer had to come after Tony with a fucking .22. A child’s gun! Ivan cut his teeth on such a gun, and he tells Justin so, but unfortunately he’d also brought thugs with less girly guns and one of them is standing right behind Ivan, so the comment earns him a knock on the head with the butt of a much manlier .45. Still pretty wimpy, though. Ivan’s been _shot_ by bigger and survived.

“You just couldn’t resist making a fool out of me, could you Tony,” Justin is saying, a little boy in his father’s shoes and his father’s tie trying to pretend he’s a man while his mother takes pictures and coos. “You just had to butt in where you weren’t welcome and make me look stupid, didn’t you?”

“Well, ah, no, you were doing that just fine on your own,” Tony quips, somehow managing to stand tall even though he is on his knees and his face is more ashen than Ivan can ever remember seeing it. He wonders when was the last time Tony had his chlorophyll. Too long, obviously.

Justin laughs, and it is supposed to be the amused laugh of someone in charge of the situation, but it comes out high and girlish and afraid. Ivan rolls his eyes.

“Oh, no, that was definitely your doing. You just can’t stand competition, can you, Tony, you just had to sabotage my suits right in the middle of the presentation—”

“Excuse me, your suits spontaneously went nuts because you suck at programming. If I _had_ decided to interfere you better believe I’d’ve made them do something with more style than just fall over or start sparking, and you’d _better_ believe I would never have put innocent lives in danger by messing with untested technology with _real people_ in them.”

Tony is genuinely angry, and Ivan can see why. He’d be surprised if half of those pilots had come out without at least major burns; one or two of them had almost certainly died right on stage. Justin goes white and can’t seem to find an answer for that, just shaking his head and pacing erratically. Ivan isn’t sure what he’s hoping to accomplish waving guns around and threatening—if he wants Tony dead then he should have just shot him already.

Well, that’s what Ivan would have done. He supposes Justin is just too incompetent to do a simple thing like revenge right.

“I used to look up to you, did you know that, Tony?” Justin says, and Ivan just can’t help the annoyed sigh that comes out of his mouth as he lolls his head back in frustration. He’d be willing to shoot Tony himself if it meant not having to hear this guy talk anymore. He sees something very interesting as he looks up, though: Clive.

He blinks, and though the distance is far he is definitely farsighted, and he’s pretty sure Clive _winks_. He lowers his head, trying to place the weapon in Clive’s hand, but it didn’t look like any gun _he’s_ ever seen, and he’s seen a lot of guns in his life. Justin is still talking about what a disappointment Tony is, which is rich coming from the guy who apparently can’t even dress himself without his mother’s help. Ivan wears clothes out of the charity box more often than not, but even he knows Justin’s outfit _screams_ functionally colorblind.

When Justin finally points the gun at Tony’s head and actually looks like he’s going to pull the trigger, Ivan hopes Tony’s assurances that Fury doesn’t want him dead were accurate.

An honest to god _arrow_ imbeds itself in Justin’s hand, and Ivan can only think, _huh_.

 

~*~

“It’s prettier from up here,” Tony says wistfully, and Ivan ignores the roiling in his stomach that tells him Tony is saying goodbye. It’s been over a month since Tony admitted he was dying, and he’s finally convinced Ivan to get in one of the suits and go flying with him.

He hates flying in airplanes and, as he thought, flying in a metal suit is even worse. He wouldn’t have agreed to do this for anything less than the sight of Tony Stark looking like he was about to beg.

 “Howard was genius,” he says, and it feels like a betrayal to Anton to say it, even if it is true and even if it will comfort Tony. They’d watched the reels and gone over the notes Fury had left, but there had been nothing there that Tony hadn’t already known, except the admission that Howard loved him. Anton had never left Ivan in doubt that he valued him, but his bitterness had dwindled the feeling merely to a sense of Ivan as an extension of himself: when he’d whispered “That should have been you, Ivan,” at the end, Ivan knew what he really meant was, “That should have been me.”

Tony doesn’t verbally acknowledge the words, but Ivan knows he heard, and that’s enough. They hover in silence a few more minutes, and then Ivan feels that the mood is getting too oppressive, so he says, “The key to the future, eh?” because they are flying directly over the Stark Expo grounds, and it certainly does look like the future come to life, flashing lights and a giant globe and—

“The key to the—”

Tony cuts himself off and hesitates for a moment, and then jets wordlessly higher, leaving Ivan to grapple furiously with the controls for a breathless moment as he wonders if Tony is going to try flying into space. He catches up with him at an altitude where the entire Expo is laid out before them like a diagram, and he starts saying something, anything, _don’t act stupid just because you’re dying_ , but Tony cuts him off abruptly.

“Shut up, Ivan, get out of my line of sight.”

But Tony doesn’t wait for him to move, he just effortlessly maneuvers himself around Ivan, giving himself a clear view of the Expo. Ivan lets him look, because what harm can it do, to indulge a madman and also, though he’s sure his brain is just grasping at straws, he’d heard that note in Tony’s voice that meant he had an idea, and he can’t help but hope—

“Son of a bitch!” Tony exclaims. “He hid it plain sight! He—that bastard hid it in plain sight all this time! Forty years it’s been sitting there, and no one—”

He’s laughing, or maybe he’s crying, and he does crazy loop-de-loops that Ivan doesn’t even try to keep up with.

“Tony, you crazy loon, get down before I throw up watching you.”

Tony does a fast flyby that makes Ivan want to throttle him.

“We’ve gotta get back to the lab, Ivan! This is crazy! I don’t know how many times I’ve looked at the thing, but I’ve never—this is it! I think this is it, this is what dad was trying to tell me, only me, only I was smart enough to figure it out, and he knew that, the bastard _knew_ that—!”

Tony whooped and hollered and crowed all the way home, and Ivan couldn’t help but smile around the lump in his throat.

 

~*~

“Sure you don’t want to stay?” Tony is half-serious; he rubs the new arc reactor compulsively, his complexion already healthier. Ivan will miss this crazy man who is something like a brother, but he knows better than to think he can make a life here.

“Russia is my home,” he says, though that’s only half the story.

“If you ever need a job…”

“I will never work for you, Stark,” he says with a grin, and Tony grins back.

“Financial backing, then, for when you finally decide to revolutionize Russia.”

Ivan rolls his eyes.

“Stay out of trouble, Stark,” he says, hefting his shoulder bag.

“You know me, Ivan.”

“That’s why I said it.”

Tony laughs, and Ivan turns away before he can do something stupid like change his mind.


End file.
